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“What Russian women think about Europe?” It’s rather difficult question but let us try to answer it. First thought which goes to the mind – “It’s another world!” This has not good or bad connotation – just the first flash, the first fact. Of course nowadays, when world situation has changed in Russia we have more information, more facts and possibilities so we are able to make our conclusions based on our own experience and well-argumented and truthful clear statements. Europe is rather big and undoubtedly very important part of the world. Trying to divide and organize our impressions and ideas of course we should speak about different aspects of life, many aspects, e.g. politics, economics, culture, style, interpersonal relations, religion and spiritual life. But in this review let us stop at general characteristics. United Europe is a great collection of different sources. Today it has a new face. Europe looks like a mosaic, like interesting mixture of nations, cultures, traditions co-existing together. Of course it’s a very hard task – to live friendly, to be attentive to people of other nationalities, to maintain the internal balance. But it’s very serious task. And the future of the whole European civilization depends on the successful solution of its problems. Local peculiarities and any forms of disagreement shouldn’t disturb European people and close for them the way to the future. For example in religious sphere it’s necessary for Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Christians be respectful to Muslims, Jews and people of other religions. And only sincere faith will help us to find the only right way to do so. Europe is a great spiritual source. We shouldn’t forget about it, we have to keep the rich European history for the next generations. It’s extremely important today, in times of globalisation, to save the core, the essence of European being, its traditions, its specific features. In a period of general standards and disappearing of the local specifics, when new style of living becomes more and more spread and popular the aim of all Europeans should be to save their unique portrait. Europe is a region which is rather close to Russia in mental sense. We have a lot of common in culture. Among many examples we could mention here the European (mostly Italian of course) impact in Russian architecture in the past and our successful multiaspect cooperation in cultural field in the present. One more thing is that our regions historically have general Christian roots. Obviously the difference between the denominations is still exist and it is normal. Sometimes it provokes the contradiction and arguments but facing the challenges of the new century we should remember about our long Christian history and our common roots. The next aspect which we need to name. Nowadays our view points are seem to be close enough. Maybe because of this we could understand European citizens better and easier than people from other continents. And in our country we accept them kindly, we are open to the communication, to the dialog. We have good relations and hope to improve them for the best. Finally let’s turn to the sociological data. It could show the objective situation and the real attitude of Russian citizens to Europe. This attitude is friendly and hopeful. During the research of Public Opinion Foundation (Moscow, Russia) the majority of respondents (59 %) noted that Russia should seek a membership in the EU. Almost a half of participants (46 %) esteemed like the most suitable for Russia the development of the relations with the Eu than with other country. So taking in account European specific features, historic and modern peculiarities many Russians consider Europe an attractive region.
